June 2025
My earliest food memory is of eating rice and dhal hand fed by our cook. She expertly mixed rice and dhal into small off-shape balls that were popped into my mouth. When I grew tired of eating she made a last mouthful and urges me to eat this aliya cutta, a ball for the elephant. Why it is named thus I didn’t ask and so I never knew.
At the flour end there were large slices of thick white bread coated with lashings of butter and jam- often strawberry jam. The bread was from the bakery near our street. I would often go there and hang around just for the smell. In a small room at the front the bakers were absorbed in a game of cards and knocking back some alcohol They paid no attention to me. Glimpsed in the back yard were the ovens to which they would go from time to time to see how the current batch of loaves was going. Eager to see the loaves I would go into the yard. I don’t recall seeing anything other than the bread being baked certainly no cakes.
